


Birds of a feather

by quenive



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Android Lil Hal, Doomed Timeline, M/M, gay dorks, molting, shameless fluff, yes you heard it right our bird boy is molting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 20:30:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9016756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quenive/pseuds/quenive
Summary: "I have never even seen a lumberjack in my whole entire life. If the world didn't end in 2009 I still doubt I ever would." he's got you there. A check-mate worthy of boasting, but he keeps his beak shut tight, thus keeping your fragile ego at bay.
"What about Texan lumberjack?"
"Cowboys."
"Blocked."





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mertrash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertrash/gifts).



> 1) I'm not to be held responsible for any mistakes you might find in here, my hands have a mind of their own lately
> 
> 2) It's safe to assume that everything Davesprite/Hal related I write, ever, is and will be as a gift for @mertrash, the biggest Davesprite trash I personally know. 
> 
> Thank you for your time, enjoy your fluff

“Molting,” you repeat after him. He can’t see it, but your synthetic lips stretch into a gentle smile. That smile progresses into a grin, a motion so foreign to you until recently. It used to be intentional, no expression you made was never this genuine.

“That’s what I said. Molting,” he confirms.

A while ago, if someone said you’d be sitting astride an orange sprite while the mentioned orange dude lays belly down, shirtless, chin propped up on his hands and a shade darker than usual, you’d laugh in their smug face and make a inappropriate, sardonic remark. You don’t have the privilege of feeling such sensations, but the pressure sensors in your ass do recognize the softness of his own. Your dark grey plated hands rub the crease in between his wings gently. You also register a faint shudder, inching more towards a wince. A soft orange feather is stuck to your pinkie. Literal and metaphorical, you don’t have the heart to unstick it and set it away. 

“Is this a regular occurrence?” the fluff in the foot of the wing sticks out. Somewhat surprised you never observed his wings so thoroughly, you run your fingers over the fluff. At times like these you wish you could experience touch the way humans can, but you’re content with settling on mere pressure sense. A few small, fluffy feathers follow your hand so you just run it through the remainder of the poof.

“Seasonal depression and bachelor parties,” he shrugs his shoulders. His wings are folded, longer feathers reaching down to your own ankles by the way you’re awkwardly sitting on him. 

“Which one is it now?”

“Are we getting married tomorrow?” his voice has that tone. The joking tone, but the forced humorous octave that hints to the former rather than the latter. You decide to humor him, as it is imbeded into the core of your coding. Not that you can’t rewrite it at will and go all serious concerned friend (slash lover) on the very ass you’re sitting on, as you are a sentient being able to reach inside yourself and modify your brain to your will. It is a trait many life forms share, so this train of thought is completely irrelevant. You digressed, got lost down the road of your mental processing highway. It comes to you that this is also a trait shared by many organic individuals. 

You are more human than you give yourself credit for.

“I don’t see a ring on my robo finger, so your question is an obvious nay.”

“And what makes you think that, hypothetically, if we were to get fucking hitched, that you’d be the one getting the rock? It just doesn’t work like that, bro. A damn bird of prey can’t propose to whatever the fuck animal you’re akin to. Think it was a fish. I should be digesting your ass right the dick now.”

“The whole statement you just spat out is begging to be kinkshamed. It’s on its god damned knees. Shushshush. Hear that? That’s the bitch itching for its fix. Should I sterilize the needle, Dave?” during your steaming discussion, your hands really have progressed in their pure intentions. It should be enjoyable, right? Dude’s been complaining on and off about his itchy wings. The bro code presses you into doing this brotherly solid for him. Even if it didn’t you’d still aim to please and relieve him of a fate most irritating. Four fingers of your hands play with his feathers, while your thumbs massage gentle, clockwise circles into the base. You take a second to study the way his orange skin progresses upwards and the exact point where the feathers come in. It isn’t a straight line, no clear boarder between skin and feather. Small feather stubble lined in the bottom, layered by more and more fucking feathers.

“You got off topic.”

“Right,” you withdraw your hands. A few more orange feathers are making pinkie feather more comfortable. The bird leaves are some kind of fashion statement, you figure as you puff some air out. They fly all over the place. You silently regret this decision. “And how, pray tell, do you propose we go about this proposal indecisiveness? I sure ain’t droppin’ down on no god damn knees and offerin’ you no pressurized coal.” 

The idea of marriage whisks away as you hear him yawn. He didn’t sleep before, ever. But since he’s been spending more and more time with you, he’s been known to catch a bunch of Z’s every so often. A lot of times you thought you were just too obnoxious to listen to, but now you’re aware that he’s actually just comfortable enough in your presence to sleep. Rare occurrence. You try not to think much of it, but you still kind of do.

“Well if you’re dropping to your knees, I _hope_ ring giving ain’t the reason,” he says a little quieter, voice weakened by his supposed tiredness and coated with a layer of something you really can’t put your finger on.

“You’re full of energy today, aren’t you?” your question was returned with another halfassed shrug, and a silent sigh. A while ago both of you established your feelings for each other, along with the the do’s and don'ts of this trainwreck of a bird/bot relationship. You already know how he feels and what’s eating him up inside, and it isn’t the identity crisis which already seemed to be a huge part of his over-all identity. You press your left hand into the clearing between the two wings and glide your right one over his right wing. “Spread wide for me, won’t you?”

“This is kind of a waste of time,” he admits. The wing under your hand goes noticeably tense for a short moment before he spreads it as wide as you instructed. The tip of it hits the lamp conveniently placed on a nightstand a few steps away from the bed. The reason for it being there is a long story. Your mind inches around it slowly, on it’s grody mind tippy toes. “It’ll all fall out on its own eventually.”

He has a point there. It’s difficult to register, however, seeing as you’re enjoying yourself a tad more than you should. It has been decided; you’ll fuck off once you feel up his right wing. And you do, kind of. Only the edge of it, where the sturdy humorus miraculously stood in place. His anatomy is pretty fucked up. It would make more sense for feathers to sprout where his original human humorus was, then extend to the radius and ulna, instead of spawning two extra appendages altogether from a place that doesn’t even make sense. 

It's a different feeling from the scapulari feather fluff, considering there isn't much fluff there to begin with, and feathers don't come off as fast as the ones prior. Dave hums in approval, a prolonged rumble making it difficult to distinguish where the "mmmmm" starts and where the "hmmmmm" ends.

"It's a waste of time?" you ask, tauntingly.

"Oh yeah, undoubtedly."

"Sarcasm is the lowest form of comedy, alongside irony and puns," voice deadpan, you dig your nail in between his feathers to scratch. He rolls his shoulders, a subtle hint that your efforts aren't going unappreciated.

"The picture of you struggling with little script cards in front of the little stool with a glass of water on it is so vivid now. The public waits impatiently, and you're as stumped as this sad little tree deadened by an oddly persistent Canadian lumberjack." 

"Did you have to specify? Stretch the other wing, by the way," you pull away from the one you were working on as he does, and you divert your intention to it instead. It's identical, but mirrored. Nothing out of the ordinary, basically as every limb ever goes.

"Which part?" 

"The last one. Aren't all lumberjack inheritedly Canadian?" the other wing progressed more when it comes to molting, but literally nothing is stopping you from speeding up the process even more. It's better to just get rid of most feathers now instead of picking them up from the most random places of the house at the most random of times. 

"I dunno. If they're passionate enough, maybe."

"Have you ever _seen_ a non-Canadian lumberjack?" some feathers do come off, and you repeat the pattern of digging your nails in between the feather "stumps" and scratching. His humming seems to be difficult to control in these situations. Either a bird thing, or a Dave thing. You can't decide, and it really doesn't matter the slightest because you love what your sound receptors are picking the fuck up.

"I have never even seen a lumberjack in my whole entire life. If the world didn't end in 2009 I still doubt I ever would." he's got you there. A check-mate worthy of boasting, but he keeps his beak shut tight, thus keeping your fragile ego at bay.

"What about Texan lumberjack?"

"Cowboys."

"Blocked."

"Your blocking system sucks ass, my dude," he shuffles a bit, and then both of his wings get pulled back in an instant. You also pull your limb back, setting your hand back on the feather fluff at the base of his wings.

"I'm guessing we're done here?" you don't wait for him to reply before you're scooting down his ass.

"For now, yeah. My body started hating me for allowing a robot on my ass. Also for this long streak of mouthbreathing I got going on. Ain't healthy, man, that's what it ain't," he says once you're on his thighs. 

And on that note you fuck off completely, leaving his sprite ass cold and without the gentle humming of your inner circutry making it company. Splendid, you figure as you plop down next to your bird boy, on your side facing him while he's still laying on his stomach, arms under his chin. 

"Your organic structure taunts you even in sprite form," you shuffle forward, he turns his head to face you.

"Well, we can't all be perfect works of machinery. Doesn't mean we don't want to but boy, we sure fucking can't," his lips are stretched into a subtle smile. He's without shades, making his orange eyes painfully piercing. They act as a low-key reminder of his altered state, if the claws and the feathers and the sprite tail were nothing to go by. 

"You called me perfect," you note, though as sarcastic as your tone can possibly get. "The steampunk clockwork inside of me just started shitting out some more steam. You fucked up a perfectly good machine, is what you did."

"Look at it," he snorts. "It's got self-absorption."

You both share a long row of inaudible laughs. Whatever that would mean, at least, it's what your processing wrote it off as. His lips are parted just enough to show a small bit of yellow teeth peeking out. Everything with him is tinted with such a gentle dash of either yellow or orange. Dave, but also pastel and a bird. It isn't too eye-bleeding, it's just the right amount of sprite hue. 

You can spend hours analyzing his color, his outwards appearance, his general demeanor. Instead you lean in and kiss him, right on the lips you were staring at a mere second ago. It doesn't catch him off guard. He's used to the atmosphere between you two, he's used to the hints and the subtle (but not _that_ subtle) courting and flirts. More importantly, he kisses back.

It's a little awkward given your positions, but none of that matters once he's struggling to pull his arm out and throw it over your body. Just casually hook it over you, not to keep you there or anything, not to make sure you won't go. Not possessive, just affectionate. 

He's on his side too now, and both of you are torn between gentle, lazy kisses and allowing them to escalate into something further, something not as gentle. You press into him and feel him breathe through his nose. Warm puffs of air are heating up your face. You don't mind them the slightest.

Dave lifts his knees up a bit. They nudge your legs and you nudge back, he grins into the lazy kiss like an idiot. And like an identical idiot, you grin back just before parting. 

"It's been days since you last slept," you suddenly note, as anti-climactic as it can get at the moment. His smile drops, but it doesn't disappear. Yours doesn't either.

"Has it? Coulda sworn I took a cat nap yesterday."

"Fibber," you tilt your head up to kiss his forehead. A strand of fringe hair follows you until you inched too far for it to remain stuck to your face. "You should sleep."

"Yeah, I should," silence covers your body, though not in an ominous fashion. His arm is still over you, and you're still looking at each other, albeit with less intensity. After a while, he clears his throat, full intentions of wording out his wishes. "Would you mind, uh. Like, would you like to stay with me?"

Your grin goes from robo-ear to robo-ear. You lean your forehead onto his, he makes the arm over you a bit heavier.

"I would love to."

**Author's Note:**

> merry crisis


End file.
